los angeles from the air

On Nov. 21, 2013, Southwest Airlines began allowing the use of portable electronic devices in airplane mode at elevations below 10,000 feet. This means you can take pictures with your smart phone for the course of the entire flight, opening up exciting new possibilities in the field of window-seat photojournalism.

One week later, Thanksgiving Day 2013, I boarded a flight from Oakland to Los Angeles and snapped these shots.

Soon to be demolished Candlestick Park.

San Bruno Mountain. The northernmost point of the Santa Cruz Mountain Range.The San Andreas Fault, just south of San Francisco. Here, the fault is a water-filled rift known as the Crystal Springs Reservoir.That narrow vertical slash in the middle of the screen is the 2-mile long Stanford Linear Accelerator.Malibu Coast

The contours of Los Angeles beneath a Thanksgiving-colored sky.

The L.A. trifecta. At the top of the screen below the furthest engine is the Silver Lake reservoir; the spot of blue below the nearer engine is Echo Park Lake; the square patch in the bottom center is MacArthur Park and its lake.